Syracuse, NY – A church soup kitchen on Syracuse’s South Avenue will reopen for lunch at noon today, two days after burglars stole or damaged hundreds of dollars worth of food from its storeroom.

Chicken stew, corn bread, salad, peaches and juice will be on the menu, thanks in part to contributions that have come in since the break-in, said Dr. L. Micah O. Dexter II, pastor of New Salem Missionary Baptist Church.

The church at 516 South Avenue couldn’t serve lunch Tuesday. Too much stuff was gone or in disarray and the police were on the scene to investigate, Dexter said.

The break-in was discovered when Deacon Eddie Walker arrived about 9:50 a.m. He could see from the driveway that the deadbolt of one of the church’s front doors was thrown and propping the door open against the other door.

Nothing was taken from the sanctuary. But down in the basement, Walker said, he found the storeroom doors wide open and daylight streaming through a window that had been boarded up.

The thieves apparently knocked down a shelf when they broke through the window, Dexter said.

“Industrial cans were just knocked all over the place. Pasta was all over the place. Rice and stuff were all over the place,” Dexter said.

“After that I’m supposing they started hauling as much as they could out of here,” he said. Cases of food that had lined the storeroom walls were missing and a freezer chest was almost empty.

Hundreds of dollars worth of food was stolen or destroyed, he said. Church officials also plan to brick up the window that the crooks broke through, at a cost estimated at $2,500. The church’s phone line was cut, too.

“It was quite a shock,” said Sister Bernadine Walker, who supervises the kitchen. “I was devastated to see they took all that time to damage things like that.”

It made for a rude homecoming for Dexter. A Syracuse native, Dexter lived 27 years in Jacksonville, Fla., where he led Faith Builders International Baptist Church, before returning a month ago to became pastor at New Salem.

The New Salem Soup Kitchen serves free lunch Tuesdays and Thursdays to 100 to 200 people, Dexter said. It also runs a dry goods food pantry twice a month.

For some patrons, the soup kitchen provides the only hot meal they will see that day, he said. Some are homeless, but others are working people who take their lunch hours at the church to make ends meet.

“Just because you have a job doesn’t mean that you actually have food at home,” Dexter said.

Officials plan to resume the regular Tuesday-and-Thursday lunch schedule. Anyone who wants to contribute toward the program can email the church at kosmissionarybaptistchurch@aol.com or call 863-5826, he said. Meats, rice, corn meal, bread, pasta, tomato sauce, peanut butter, jelly and bottled water are needed.